Calls to boycott Nani’s Ante Sundaraniki in Karnataka, after actor says he won’t dub it in Kannada

Last evening, when the team of Nani’s Ante Sundaraniki released its teaser, little did they think that the rom-com would invite the anger of a section of its audience. The film, which pairs Nani with Nazriya, is being released in Tamil and Malayalam too, as Adade Sundara and Aha Sundara, respectively, prompting a section of the media to ask why it wasn’t getting a Kannada version.

Nani responded saying, “As actors, we like to show the original version of the film with our own voices to a larger set of audiences, but due to language-specific issues, we end up dubbing it in other languages. Only with Kannada, we don’t have such issues, because they understand Telugu well and watch our films in Telugu. This is why we are not releasing the film in Kannada.”

His response, though, has caused quite the outrage among Kannada movie fans, who are not only calling for a boycott of the actor’s film in Karnataka, but also urging people in the state to support Rakshit Shetty’s pan-India film 777 Charlie instead and make #777Charlie trend, as it is set to release on the same day, June 10.

The reach of Telugu films in Karnataka has always been a bone of contention for Kannada filmmakers and there is no denying that there is a large market for those films, but what irked audiences is that a team was assuming that everyone understood the language at a time when even a biggie like RRR had a Kannada version that the lead actors themselves dubbed for.

Check out some of the tweets in response to Nani’s statement here:

Amid all this, though, there were some who saw reason in Nani’s statement, as Telugu movies tend to do well in Karnataka in the original language. In fact, when RRR released, it had relatively fewer Kannada versions in the state, because there were more takers for the original.